Sadiq Khan’s ‘manifesto’ for London, lessons for Tower Hamlets and would Robin Wales be his City Hall deputy?

During an interview with Sadiq Khan last Thursday, the day before he launched a booklet he edited for the Fabian Society on policy ideas for London, I asked him about the contrasting approaches to community cohesion followed in Newham and Tower Hamlets.

As well as being Shadow Justice Secretary, the Tooting MP is also Shadow Minister for London. He ran Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign and during 2014 we may well get strong hints (and more) that he is Ed’s favourite for Labour’s next candidate for Mayor of London.

Officially, Sadiq hasn’t declared himself, but it’s all but certain he will. In the meantime, he’ll be in charge of co-ordinating Labour’s council campaign in London for May and Tower Hamlets is top of the party’s hit list.

He’s a big fan of Newham Mayor Sir Robin Wales, as are many in Labour’s top team judging from the amount of policy ideas they seem to be adopting from him.

As I disclosed here in April, Sir Robin has City Hall ambitions of his own….but but but… . Sadiq describes him as a “good friend” and he asked him to write a chapter for the booklet Our London. His piece was on the potential power of local councils to help create jobs: not in the way that Tower Hamlets has traditionally done by using public cash to create non-jobs, but by training up youngsters and encouraging businesses to hire them through a scheme called Workplace.

Since Sir Robin outlined his ambitions to me in April, he’s been fairly low key on the subject. I suspect that’s because he now sees himself as a future driving force deputy/chief of staff…to Sadiq Khan. A Labour version of Sir Edward Lister, as it were.

Sadiq is also more impressed with Sir Robin’s attitude towards community cohesion, particularly compared with the Lutfur Rahman model in Tower Hamlets. During our chat, I raised the issue of Tower Hamlets council funding free Bengali Mother Tongue classes for kids whose grasp of English isn’t often up to scratch. He was shocked. Such finite public money should be used for English lessons, he said.

He also said he was not particularly in favour of using grants for mono-ethnic projects and events: that if taxpayers’ money was to be offered, there should be some demonstration of inclusiveness to people of all backgrounds. Clearly, public money being used for things like Eid in the Square or London-wide Diwali celebrations would be exceptions.

Anyway, all this is b way of background…and because it’s of relevance to Tower Hamlets, I thought people might be interested in reading the interview I did with Sadiq, which was published on Express Online yesterday.

I tried to explore his personal background, what shaped him…suffering racism as a kid in London in the late Seventies and early Eighties certainly had an effect, as it had on so many in Tower Hamlets.

FOR football mad youngsters growing up around Wandsworth, southwest London, the question of which team to support isn’t usually the hardest decision they’ll ever make.

But in the early Eighties, Chelsea weren’t much good. And neither were their fans the most welcoming group to teenagers of Pakistani heritage.

Which is why Tooting MP Sadiq Khan, Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary and an aspiring Mayor of London, is a passionate and lifelong Liverpool fan.

One of his elder brothers did go to the Shed end at Stamford Bridge, but he and his friends were so appallingly attacked and abused, supporting Chelsea just “wasn’t an option”.

He says he feels uncomfortable talking about his experiences of racism–some of them violent–but they have clearly helped shaped him, first as a leading human rights lawyer, also as a Wandsworth councillor, then as an MP and minister, and now as a yet-to-be-confirmed challenger for London’s City Hall in 2016.

Today, he launches a fascinating pamphlet of essays that he’s edited and entitled ‘Our London – The Capital 2015’.

In some ways, the pamphlet is groundbreaking: it’s been sponsored by both the City of London and Unions Together, the political campaigning arm of 15 trade unions.

As one MP joked, “that’s harmony”, but the collection contains thoughts from a number of leading London lights, including from Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the recently ennobled mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Khan’s own chapter is on housing (“housing, housing, housing” should be Labour’s solution to poverty, he argues) but almost all of them tap into the theme raised by Labour leader Ed Miliband in his own foreword: the cost of living crisis.

Arguably, that crisis is greater in high cost London than anywhere else.

The pamphlet is something of a Labour vision for London: more housing, a London minimum wage, new tunnel and bridge crossings for the east of the capital, more grassroots access to the booming arts scene, greater representation of ethnic minorities in the Metropolitan

Police, and more harmonious community cohesion are just some of the ideas explored.

But who would deliver them for Labour?

MPs David Lammy and Diane Abbott are known contenders, as is Newham Mayor Sir Robin Wales, but when Sadiq Khan was made Shadow Minister for London 11 months ago, it was a strong hint he was the leadership’s favoured candidate.

In fact, Sir Robin, who has written an essay for the pamphlet and whose policies have been admired by Labour HQ, might well end up as Khan’s deputy.

Does he want the job, though? Of course he does, but he won’t confirm it.

“I’m happy in the Shadow Cabinet, but if the ball comes my way, I’ll certainly play it,” he says.

But what would he be like as the capital’s most powerful man and London’s first Muslim mayor.

Unlike current incumbent Tory Boris Johnson, or his Labour predecessor Ken Livingstone, he doesn’t seem to have an ego that mirrors London’s massive scale.

Yet a more thoughtful, subtle and softer approach is perhaps just what is needed after years of division and bombast.

Now 43, he grew up the son of a bus driver in Earlsfield and has lived in the Tooting area all his life.

He is married to a fellow solicitor and has two daughters, both of whom went to the same state schools as their parents.And the fact that they haven’t had to endure some of the racism he suffered when their age is to him a mark of how much London has changed.

“Things have definitely moved on in the sense that the sort of name calling [I experienced] would not be tolerated and schools are now far, far better at stamping it out,” he says.

“There’s much more a zero tolerance now. My big brother used to go to Stamford Bridge a few times and was given a hard time. They used to have this this thing called The Shed. And if you were a person who looked like my big brother–Asian–you weren’t welcome there.

“People we know suffered really bad racial abuse. They were beaten up and all the rest of it, so because of their experience of Chelsea, at that stage, I wanted nothing to do with Chelsea.

“Supporting them really wasn’t an option for me.”

Asked about his own experiences, he says: “I feel uncomfortable talking about these sorts of things because I don’t want younger people of ethnic origin to feel discouraged, but when I was growing up you’d often suffer racial abuse, verbal abuse name-calling, people driving past and spitting on your car.

“It didn’t happen all the time but it wasn’t unusual, so you’d be playing football in the park, and somebody would call you the P word. You’d be walking down the road or on the estate, you’d see a group coming along; the sensible thing to do would be to cross the road and just to avoid it, so you became street wise and you’d learn ways of avoiding trouble if you could.

“That said, I can look after myself. We knew how to look after ourselves if we got into a fight. I’ve got six brothers. It wasn’t an issue about being a coward and running away but it was about being sensible. Life’s hard enough as it is without looking for trouble.”

“It was part and parcel of life in those days, hearing about someone being attacked or beaten up. That’s why the murder of Stephen Lawrence had such an impact on people like us because we feel the ripples.

“There but for the grace of God that could’ve been me, it could have been my brother.”

Does he suffer racial abuse now?

“In recent times, not to my face. One of things that happens when you become middle aged and you wear nice clothes and you drive a nice car is it doesn’t happen so much, but I still know which estates to avoid and how to be streetwise.”

As mayor, he would be responsible for overseeing the Metropolitan Police Service whose struggle to recruit and retain ethnic minority officers is known to be a concern for Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe.

Khan has similar concerns. “Do we really want a London where people feel like second class citizens because of the colour of their skin?” he says generally.

While he believes abundant and genuinely affordable housing, including private rented accommodation (which he wants regulated) is the key to social mobility and poverty, community cohesion is also a key theme.

“Community cohesion is not gobbledegook,” he says. It’s vital.

He argues for more “community hubs”, places such as playgrounds, local football clubs and schools where people of all backgrounds and faiths actually mix and learn about each other.

The earlier the mingling starts in life, the better.

What he would not want is public money directed to projects that encourage a mono-ethnic identity and introspection.

In Tower Hamlets, where many young Bangladeshi children struggle with English when they first attend primary school, grant money is used to subsidise free Mother Tongue classes to teach them Bengali.

He himself is fluent in Urdu but is adamantly against such policies: “When you have finite resources, that money should be used to teach them English.”

Khan, regularly goes to Hyde Park Corner to watch the soapbox Sunday orators, is not shy of a debate.

But will he fulfil his dream for London? As one of his Labour colleague points, his 2010 election slogan in Tooting was “Yes we Khan.”

27 Responses

But is Mr Khan really any good or just another Labour Party coward often afraid to speak-out especially when it might upset others in the Labour Party ?

Listening to him being interviewed on the television, one gets a distinct impression the man will not condemn what he knows is wrong. Mr Khan is not alone, other senior LP MPs are precisely the same; Tories too.

I can’t understand some politicians’ reluctance to forcible condemn bad and evil wherever it is. If someone hasn’t the courage to speak-out strongly when something is clearly wrong, are they really anyone good to the public ?

Give us some examples of where he is afraid to speak out when it might upset the others in the Labour Party.

Could you also point to where, when he was speaking on television, he gave the impression that he didn’t condemn that which he knew to be wrong and can you name the other Labour MPs, senior ones it seems, who also are aware of wrong doing and fail to mention or condemn it?

Every time I hear or see Mr Khan being interviewed, I listen carefully. I do not take notes but as I do listen carefully I notice his repeated tendency to utter mild cushioned opinions apparently designed to avoid robustly stating his personal opinion.

Mr Khan enjoys protection, pursuant to Labour’s HRA 1998, the Maastricht Treaty and the famous CoE Treaty and Protocols started in 1951, for Freedom of Expression.

Politicians tend to speak waffle and jargon plus – especially in Labour – many unappealing American terms in preference to proper English. They tend too to avoid giving commitments and usually avoid saying anything that might annoy or upset others. Rachel Reed is the same although she is worse than Mr Khan.

The public’s well-being is doomed when politicians prefer uttering the Party Approved version in preference to their own feelings. Being too scared to speak-out openly and honestly is hardly a commendable attribute in any person.

Now, what is London Labour’s plan to dramatically save the lives of cyclists using Boris’s Highways of Death ? If that is too difficult for the LP and their adherents to answer, lets restrict the question to the borough’s roads.

An interesting article Ted and clearly the first of several shots across Lutfur’s bows in the lead up to next May. The two elections, London and Tower Hamlets, are clearly linked and if both cannot be taken by Labour then questions have to be raised about Milliband’s leadership and the ability of the Labour Party to run the country.

Tower Hamlets is where the party was born, the plaque to George Lansbury still stands on the Mile End Rd where his house was, at least until someone steals it, and for the government of the borough to be in the hands of Rahman and his bunch of Jihadis and crooks is a disgrace that Milliband should be addressing.

The choice of candidate for London Mayor is crucial and should not be in the hands of the London Labour Party which, under the control of the far left, selected the loser Livingstone twice. Khan would be a good candidate and on a move to Labour across the country a winning one, the problem he will have is that the far left favour Abbott who is guaranteed to lose as she is a walking disaster area with any number of gaffes which the opposition will use. Her anti white positions and statements will guarantee another Tory term.

Khan’s statements are clearly another move away from the race based politics that cost Labour the Mayoralty twice under Livingstone. His opposition to ” mother tongue ” teaching will set him firmly in the mainstream but he still has to do more to position himself as not an simply an ethnic politician but a politician who happens to be from an ethnic minority.

As far as I know there has still been no in depth analysis by the Labour Party as to why it lost twice in London, the last time when there was a swing to Labour across the rest of the country. There are a few things I could mention that might be worth consideration.

Firstly Livingstone was seen as having been around too long, he was simply well past his sell by date and had started to come across as arrogant and condescending. Secondly he was basing his campaigns on the fights of the 1970’s with Thatcher, the Fares Fair campaign, the Poll Tax and all of the other issues that for much of the electorate were history.

But it was his identification with ethnic minority causes and the massive funding of black only groups which sunk him. When the first of the Gilligan articles appeared in the Evening Standard in December 2007 he was in trouble but could have fronted the whole thing out and still won.

There was no evidence that he benefited from the millions that went missing or that he even knew about them but instead of taking the position that he was going to call in forensic auditors and or the police and to suspend everyone involved he denounced the whole thing as a racist conspiracy, smears and turned up at Mayor’s question time to say as much drinking scotch at ten in the morning!

Without doubt the issue of ethnic minorities will be central to many political campaigns in our inner cities for years to come. I have despaired in the past at the gutlessness of politicians to confront the issue instead of which they have tried to buy off a whole series of un-elected, self appointed community leaders who presented themselves as representing mythical communities.

All in all this is a good start, not simply to get a Labour Mayor but to begin to make a realistic examination of race relation in the Capital and try to correct the political correctness of the last forty years which has brought us to the state we are in.

The two elections, London and Tower Hamlets, are clearly linked and if both cannot be taken by Labour then questions have to be raised about Milliband’s leadership and the ability of the Labour Party to run the country.

Both the GLA and LBTH elections are classified as ‘local elections’ meaning they are neither European Parliament nor UK Parliament elections.

Since Ed Miliband is not in charge of either the GLA or the wonderful and delightful LBTH, I failed to understand the connection between local government and national government and the resulting basis of the Mullah’s condemnation of his party Leader.

Tower Hamlets …… the government of the borough to be in the hands of Rahman and his bunch of Jihadis and crooks is a disgrace that Milliband should be addressing.

Yet when one contacts the national government’s Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG), they gleefully proclaim they can not intervene because that is local democracy. What lawful ability has the Leader of a national political party to directly intervene in the affairs of two local government entities ? None. Therefore no disgrace can be attributed to Mr Miliband.

the far left favour Abbott who is guaranteed to lose as she is a walking disaster area with any number of gaffes which the opposition will use. Her anti white positions and statements will guarantee another Tory term.

Diane has calmed down substantially over the years. She was democratically elected under the Labour Party banner with Labour Party support. Obviously the Labour Party approve of their candidate and MP ?

Perhaps ONE nationwide (i.e. Scottish, Welsh and English) one-size fits all Labour Party needs to be broken-up into regional Labour Parties. One region for Wales and another for Scotland with England having about 7 regions, must improve Labour’s public accountability and improve the standards of government in this rapidly declining country ?

As I have written previously, Labour just wants power ….. and without a proper vision either.

It’s difficult to reply logically to someone who has both a shaky grasp of the subject and an inability to communicate in clear English and all you do is make yourself look foolish.I understand that Mr Khan can be contacted via http://www.parliament.uk. The House of Commons will give you his office number. You could also google him and get his website which has contact details.

You omitted one important thing about the LP – it was established by Trades Unions who deliberately stopped the poor and workless getting jobs. The TUs were operating a restricted practise of keeping well-paid jobs for the few who were members of the Trades Unions. It was a sort of blacklisting.

The modern Labour Party is linked politically and economically with the Co-Op who fund joint Labour & Co-op election candidates, give generous ‘soft’ loans to Labour and who seemed to appoint the chairman of the Co-op Bank on the basis he was a Labour councillor, despite him knowing absolutely nothing about banking. The now former chairman’s tendency to consume unlawful drugs was recently publicised.

I welcome Labour stating publicly now what problems adversely affecting the lives and businesses of the people in the LBTH Labour have identified and what is Labour’s vision to improve the status quo. Suspect I’ll still be waiting long after the 2014 council elections for an illuminating reply.

Please look at my previous comment about you making yourself look foolish. As regards your first sentence let us envisage a group of late nineteenth century trades unionists discussing forming a political party.

At a meeting somewhere in the East End a group of dockers, gas workers, boilermakers are meeting to draft the first constitution and the motion to deliberately stop the poor and workless is passed unanimously. Yes it does sound a bit unlikely doesn’t it?

As regards your last sentence either you are living in another country or don’t get out much. There is no shortage of documents from all wanting votes as to what they are going to do. It seems to have escaped your attention that the article we are commenting on was written because of Labour document called ” Our London: The Capital 2015″ or didn’t you actually read what Ted wrote?

Dianne Abbott, as far as I know, thinks that white people divide and rule blcks and that the National Union of Teachers members in inner city schools discriminate only against African Caribbean youths as it is only that group who do badly academically.

This of course means that for some unexplained reason a union with a higher proportion than usual of Trotskyists as members has decided to pick on one ethnic group and ignore the others. Top that up with sending her son to a private school because the Hackney ones were so bad and you are handing the Mayoralty to the Tories on plate if she is the Labour candidate.

The Trades Unions established the Labour Party primarily to give themselves a political voice. Nothing about wanting to improve the lot of the unfortunate, the poor, the disabled, the sick, the dying, the uneducated and the workless – those came later when the Trades Unions realised their political party needed the public’s votes to enter parliament. Trades Unions membership votes alone were insufficient.

Ed Miliband was elected Labour Party Leader by the decisive vote of the same Trades Unions.

You wrote, inter alia:-

At a meeting somewhere in the East End a group of dockers, gas workers, boilermakers are meeting to draft the first constitution and the motion to deliberately stop the poor and workless is passed unanimously. Yes it does sound a bit unlikely doesn’t it?

The work exclusively reserved for Trades Unions members doctrine existed well before the creation of the Trades Unions own political party – note the chosen name ‘Labour’ which related directly to the activities of the Trades Unions and their established objectives – keeping the doing of paid Labour for Trades Unions members and preventing non-members doing the same Labour. A true form of work apartheid – not blacks and whites but TU members and non-TU members.

Not surprisingly you make no attempt to claim that at the drafting of the TU’s own political party’s constitution, the TU members did not attempt to abolish their keep the work exclusively for TU members doctrine..

If Labour is ever to become a genuinely Independent political party it needs to break its perpetual association with its largely out-dated parents and the strange Co-Op links. But it won’t. Its parent’s donations are too important to loose. Whereas grown-up children assert their own will – Labour has yet to achieve adolescence 🙂

Like a spoilt child, Labour just want power without vision and responsibility. No wonder we haver the current Mayor !

What has Labour ever done for Tower Hamlets apart from playing with minor issues?

Ted perhaps you need to speak to Bengali parents in Tower Hamlets without making the assumptions that they don’t speak English. I say from my own experience as parents of 2 young kids who don’t speak a single word of Bengali but are fluent in English and although they don’t attend any Bengali classes at the moment certainly it will be something I consider in the future. This is the case of large majority of kids in Tower Hamlets whose parents are second generation Bangladeshi and they speak fluent English themselves. This is also reflected in education achievement of our kids. Perhaps you could write a positive piece about our schools as highlighted by the recent report. I would kindly request you get up to date with constant development of the minority communities without making assumptions about them. Personally, I find some of your written work about the Bangladeshi community insulting not to mention frustrating.

And I have no problem with children learning Bengali – I’d like to learn the language myself- but with lessons being offered free of charge after school on the rates. What possible justification is there for this? Will you use this free service for your children or pay for private lessons?

Ditto to what Ted said. The problem with children learning a “mother tongue” comes when this is paid for from public funds which be supporting public services and people in need.

Everywhere else in London, all other cultural groups manage to find ways of encouraging children to learn their mother tongue (parents can play a very big part by talking to their children!!) without recourse to public funds.

I’d say that spending money on one group and not others in what is very clearly a multi-cultural Tower Hamlets is something which should be challenged on the basis that it seems to discriminate in a way which is not helpful.

It also does not promote integration (i.e. everybody speaking the same language well) and achievement which should be the first priority.

Such funds might be much better spent on extra Maths or English lessons for those kids who need them – irrespective of their mother tongue!

I take it from his comments that John Barnes knows nothing about the Bangladeshi community whatsoever but is an outside observer of the self hating, breast beating Guardianista variety for whom, as a result of Imperialism and Colonialism and any other amount of isms, ethnic minorities are above criticism.

As someone who happens to speak, read and write Bengali and has been associated with the community in Tower Hamlets for almost forty years may I completely endorse Ted’s views on mother tongue language teaching which are incidentally supported by a substantial proportion of the Bangladeshi community itself.

Mr Barnes would, no doubt, condemn British ex pats from the Punjab through Kenya to the Costa del Sol who refused to mix and learn the local language. Let a member of an ethnic minority do the same and they are simply preserving their culture it would seem as far as Mr Barnes is concerned.

Communities that live in language cocoons are at the mercy of the leaders of those communities and look inwards for guidance and explanations of the world around them. It is no coincidence that the current council leadership is intent on maintaining the Bengali language as the medium of teaching as with that comes political patronage and power.

Over the years I have seen a succession of spineless whites in various occupations to do with education and community relations who have not had the guts to stand up to what amounts to cultural fascism. Terrified of being labelled racist they have condemned by their cowardice a couple of generations of young Bangladeshis to the use of a medium of communication called Banglish, a hybrid dialect larded with American gangster/rapper loan words which make them suitable for employment stacking shelves at Sainsburys if that.

All over the world millions of people pay hard earned money to learn English, the command of which they see as way out of poverty and isolation. Mr Barnes sees, or so it would appear, fluent use of the language by young Bangladeshis born in London as some kind of cultural imperialism and an attack on their traditional culture.

Fortunately the PC brigade, of which the unfortunate Mr Barnes is an all to obvious example, are now in full retreat and he really is fighting a rearguard action.

I wholehearted concur with Ted and with Mr Mullah about active integration. So why isn’t it happening fully in the LBTH ? What is hindering or even preventing proper community integration ?

Having lived outside the British Isles, in several countries, I always integrated and was impossible to distinguish from the natives except for my accent and my passport.

On national occasions I too hung the country’s national flag out. I wore local clothes, eat local food, watched local TV and read local newspaper. I spoke the local lingo despite people at work saying ‘Please speak in English because we want to practise our English’.

One gets so much pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction from integrating yet successive governments, especially Labour, espouse the unseen virtues of ‘multi-‘ everything which is de facto separatism.

Lets have ‘learn English language and culture’ lessons on the rates – free for all whom reside in TH. If the few don’t want to speak English and understand British (or English) culture they should return to their home countries.

I’m tired of this bull sh%t from toffee nose fart brains telling to learn English and integrate. I’ll integrate if want to and learn whatever language I bloody choose. If you don’t like it naff of to your boring rat hole lives.

P.S Ted, these kids who can’t speak English are apparently doing quiet well in Tower Hamlets schools. May be Sir Robin should introduce compulsory Bengali language in Newham to improve standards there?

It is absolutely and completely impossible for children who don’t speak English to do well in Tower Hamlets Schools. That’s because of the way in which educational achievement is measured – which in turn is determined by Goverment. It assumes a good grasp of English.

The only way they can be considered at all to be doing “quite well” is if they have improved their English language skills.

On the other hand it is perfectly possible to highlight OFSTED reports on schools in Tower Hamlets which have highlighted the fact that failure to employ teaching assistants with a good grasp of the English language has had a negative impact on educational attainment of the children in the school.

It’s important to teach children English so they can do well in later life

It’s important to teach English language knowledge and skills to the parents who don’t have a good grasp of English – because that also helps the children. It also helps the parents to integrate better and to get a better job.

Of course that would all depend on whether the Mayor – and parents – want children to do well………